Monthly Archives: July 2012

Nottingham BNP’s Olympic journey

Nottingham BNP have been watching the Olympics with conflicting emotions. First there was relief that there were some “white events” like swimming. Then there was outrage against the “British ‘regime'” for “bashing up amateur cyclists” as the repression of London Critical Mass got underway. This quickly turned to disgust on the realisation that the victims of police aggression were “Uk indymedia jobless dreadlocked unwashed pricks”. And finally, never far away with the BNP, was hate: “So why was vermin Doreen Lawrence at the opening ceremony – hang the bitch”.

As we’ve previously revealed, Nottingham BNP’s Twitter feed is a brain dump for unhinged fascist, Bob Brindley. These are the thoughts of a man who wants to run for Police Commissioner in Nottingham this Autumn. Seeing as he can barely control his own irrational hatred, I can’t imagine many people would trust him with the local constabulary.


Far-right silence on Derby paedophiles speaks volumes

Stories of gangs grooming vulnerable girls for sex have been very prominent in the media recently, but it was easy to miss a recent court case in Derby, where eight men were convicted of sexual and other offences against teenage girls, mostly in the Normanton and Pear Tree areas of the city.  All but one of the men are white.

There was relatively little coverage of the case in the mainstream media, in contrast to the big headlines given to a similar case in Rochdale in May involving a group of Asian men (or to an earlier case in Derby also involving Asian men).  An interesting analysis of this difference in media coverage can be read here, but it’s also worth pointing out the notable difference in the way the far right have reacted to the convictions of these various sexual predators.  Various fascist groups were very keen to attempt to hijack the Rochdale case for their own ends, with frantic activity including demos outside the court in Liverpool, and a general attempt to increase tensions in the area resulting in mob violence in Heywood.

Drips in the rain in Liverpool

Derbyshire Blackshirt-in-Chief Paul Hilliard (above, with Nick Griffin and friends) was outspoken on the case, and travelled north to join BNP demos outside the court against the Rochdale grooming gang.  It’s notable that Hilliard hasn’t felt the need to organise his BNP cohorts to mobilise against the more recent paedophile trial on his doorstep.  There has been a similar lack of comment or action from the EDL groups in the region, or from the Infidels, or any of the groups who were so keen to “take a stand” against the Rochdale paedophiles.  It seems that fascists are only interested in the grooming of vulnerable girls if the perpetrators are non-white.

There is no surprise there; we have critiqued the far right’s warped attitude to these grooming cases before, and their silence on this Derby case speaks volumes about their opportunism and hypocrisy.

 


Know your enemy

We’ve written a quick guide to the far right in the East Midlands which you can access from the top menu. We hope to keep it up to date as new developments emerge.


Racist attacks in 2012

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has released its report on racist attacks in the first 6 months of 2012. They point out that “Given that these incidents were recorded in the local or (much less frequently) national press, they show only a tiny fraction of the true scale of violence.” However, three incidents from the East Midlands get a mention.

Under the heading of “Attacks, graffiti and threats by supporters of far right groups” the racist attack by Daventry EDL member, Charles Dickie, is noted.

2 March 2012: An EDL supporter told an Asian taxi-driver that he was ‘not welcome here’, pointing to EDL slogans on his T-shirt and launching a tirade of abuse. When he was arrested he sang EDL songs and police later found anti-Muslim posts on his Facebook page.

Dickie, who later denied he was racist, pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and to smashing a police phone while in custody. He told police he “would be at the top one day” and warned “there better be lots of them as there will be 5,000 of me”. Police made a formal objection to a bail application after Dickie continued to make veiled threats during his time in custody over the weekend.

Dickie was found guilty of threatening the driver because of his religion in absentia after he refused to get into a prison van taking him to the trial. The magistrate heard he had made threats towards a planned mosque in Daventry to police. He was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison plus four weeks for failure to surrender to bail after an assault in Blackpool the previous year.

Also mentioned in the IRR report are an attack on Muslim taxi driver, Harun Shah Zaman, in Leicester and a racist attack on a Pakistani man in Northampton.

19 May 2012: Harun Shah Zaman, a taxi driver in Leicester, was brutally beaten and robbed by four passengers. One of the passengers headbutted him and another punched him in the face before the other two (female) passengers joined in the assault. The group then stole his wallet, his cash bag, his keys and his sat nav (which they smashed on the floor) and ran off. Despite there being several witnesses to the attack, nobody intervened.

2 April 2012: An Asian man was savagely beaten in an unprovoked racist attack in Northampton by a white male who was walking a pitbull–type dog. The victim, with his wife at the time of the incident, crossed the road away from the attacker when he racially abused them; but the white male then followed the couple and headbutted and punched him to the floor.

There is a high prevalence of anti-Muslim threats and violence in the region, as well as in the country at large, something that is stoked by the far right’s rhetoric and demonisation of the Muslim community. The IRR mention 9 far right racist incidents, of which 4 involved the EDL and one involved the North West Infidels EDL splinter.

We need to tackle these fascists and make sure the attacks stop.


Nazi Northants EDL

Northants EDL is represented on Twitter by the account @NorthantsEDL. S/he follows some rather interesting accounts such as @EinNiggerBrennt (“A nigger burnt” in German), White Pride World Wide, Hooligan-14/88 and various others using Nazi imagery such as the swastika, the Celtic cross and the SS insignia.

Some of the accounts followed by Northants EDL

Some of those followed have some rather choice descriptions as well: @RacistBilly proudly writes “I hate niggers.” @whiteangel1488 says “My blood is my honour, my race is my pride, ein reich ein volk ein führer 14/88”. @david186edgey says he is “Anti Z.O.G. Anti race mixing.” ZOG stands for Zionist Occupation Government, an anti-semitic conspiracy theory concocted by Nazis suggesting that Jews control the world. @Mnicolasc18 quotes neo-Nazi David Lane’s infamous 14 word phrase. Many of the accounts use the numbers 14 (referencing the 14 word phrase), 18 (=AH =Adolf Hitler) and 88 (=HH =Heil Hitler).

This is further evidence of an outright fascist, white supremacist and Hitlerite element within the EDL.


English Democrats beat BNP in Desborough

An election was held on July 20th for the Loatland ward of Desborough town council, in Kettering borough, and was contested by two nationalist candidates; Kevin Sills of the English Democrats polled 14.2% and came third, beating the BNP’s Clive Skinner who polled 6%.  Both beat the Libdems, who came last in yet another dismal local election for them.

This is an interesting result, with nationalist parties grabbing a fifth of the vote between them, and the BNP getting beaten convincingly by new-kids-on-the-right the English Democrats.  This result will encourage the ED, who are attempting to establish themselves as a specifically english nationalist party, occupying political terrain somewhere between the tories and the BNP.

They do not qualify as a fascist party, although they are firmly of the right, with attacks on “political correctness” and a tough anti-immigration attitude, for instance.  It is important to note that their activist base contains a large proportion of ex-BNP members, with some claiming that 43% of their candidates in May’s local elections were recent BNP defectors.  The party certainly seems a comfortable home for rats who have jumped the BNP’s leaky old ship, and it seems inevitable that this fact will shape the political development of the ED.

Desborough man Kevin Sills is not a recent BNP defector; however, he is certainly no stranger to fascist parties, having previously been a member of the National Democrats and the Freedom Party (not to be confused with the EDL-linked BNP breakaway British Freedom!) and, allegedly, the National Front, all three of which are now defunct.  Sills has also stood in local elections as an independent.

Kevin Sills – far-right rosette collector

Sills is a good example of the sort of candidate the English Democrats seem to attract – a veteran fascist still searching for a credible political home in which to make electoral advances.  We remain very sceptical that such people have truly renounced the far-right politics where they cut their teeth, and will continue to monitor the ED, especially where they are performing strongly in parts of the region.


I think I see a pattern here!

From top left, clockwise: Blackburn (Apr ’11), Bristol (Jul ’12), Cambridge (Jul ’11), Rochdale (Jun ’12), Luton (May ’12), Hyde (Feb ’12)

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Another pissed EDL member ends up in court….

Leicester EDL’s James Lee Elliott has been convicted after drunkenly hassling a UAF stall in the city last October.  Good to see the local divisions maintaining their hard-earned reputation of pissed-up idiocy!

James ‘glassy eyed’ Elliott after a heavy drinking session


BNP third in Corby by-election

A Council byelection for the East Ward in Corby was held yesterday.  Local organiser Gordon Riddell came third for the BNP, beating the Libdems into fourth place.  The fascists polled 9.4%, which was down 0.7% from 2011’s ballot in the same ward.  The BNP see this as a promising locale, and have been aiming to make political capital out of recent allegations of sexual grooming of vulnerable girls by older men, some of whom are Asian, in Corby.  As we have discussed in the light of similar cases elsewhere, this is a subject which the far right think they can harness to their own advantage.  The BNP will be disappointed that they failed to increase their vote share on Thursday, but seem likely to continue attempting to exploit tensions in Northants.


The crazy world of Bob Brindley

Things are looking bleak for Nottingham BNP. Hit by the shockwaves of the national BNP meltdown, members have been leaving in droves. Former organiser, Chris Bell, has stepped down and left the sinking ship in the decidedly shaky hands of Bob Brindley.

Bob’s the man who used to do lonely leafleting sessions outside the Royal Centre until he was chased off by a lone anti-fascist earlier this year. His tweets on the Nottingham BNP account have ranged from the bizarre to the paranoid to uncensored fascist braindump (and usually all three at once) and have given us a chuckle or two over the past months. Here’s a few selected highlights from his spittle spattered keyboard: